In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our media production is an Action Thriller genre, which is a hybrid between Action (films such as Die Hard or Terminator) and Thrillers (films such as Panic Room and Se7en). We would compare our film to others such as any James bond film or Taken film. This is because these films, similarly to ours are Action Thrillers and are high budget films using top actors (such as Daniel Craig or Liam Neeson).

The genre is an important factor of our film as it sent the stock characters, settings and iconography that would normally be used in a successful Action Thriller. We have followed a lot of these stock features, as well as deliberately opposing some of them for dramatic effect.

THE GENRE

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our media production uses forms and conventions of real media products, such as stock characters.

Our first character, “The Ex-Agent” is an important character and personality in a secret agent, action film (Not necessarily being an EX-Agent). Our character, “Will” (Played by Philip Martin) may not look that part in this opening scene, but we have targeted the cliché personas of a secret agent and somewhat based him on them. For example, he is a very clever man, picking out what he hears and quickly coming to conclusions. He is also confident about his views and abilities, as best seen in the conversation scene when he does not cower from the confrontation from the agent but rather rises to his challenge and fights his point.

We decided to give Will a strong British accent to indicate that he is a stereotypical British agent, who fought for his country in MI5 (until mistakenly blamed for a failed mission). It also says a lot about the character, the British stereotype of being reserved is a goal we aimed to portray in our film, carried out by showing him spending his time alone around the house doing not a lot.

THE EX-AGENT

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our next (And only other) character is the current agent. This character is portrayed in the opening scene as almost the “Bad Guy”. This isn’t however the case later on in the narrative, but with the opening scene portrayed from Will’s point of view, we decided it was important for our audience to view him like this as Will currently does.

We targeted some of the stock characteristics of secret agents from other films such as the “Bourne” or “Mission Impossible” trilogies. As his character is intended to be a dedicated and trusted agency worker, we portrayed him with little emotion and feeling. We wanted the affect that he had been sent by someone at the agency with a mission, so to achieve this we tried to make his lines sound more scripted than Will’s.

We dressed him in a smart suit and some stereotypical sunglasses so that the character didn’t need much introduction, as the audience would assume this characters position in the storyline. It also highlights the difference between an agent currently working and Will, our ex-agent.

THE AGENT

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

One way we challenged the stock setting of an action film was moving away from the inter city settings and moved to an average suburban household, away from much action.

We chose to do this because it successfully juxtaposes what an audience would expect to see in an action movie. We wanted to oppose this expectation because we were using the character of Will to challenge the stereotypical view of a secret agent. In other words, because Will is no longer a secret agent, we wanted to show that he was living a normal life where he can relax. Combined with the short scene from the park, we think we successfully showed Will living his private and now boring life outside of the agency.

THE HOUSE

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

We used iconography in our film to show how it uses stereotypical features of Action Thrillers to ensure the audience feel as though that is the genre we intended the production to be.

Features of iconography that we used include the font for the title credits and the main movie title itself. We chose to use “Agency FB” throughout our production as it evokes a formal and clean image which other Action Thrillers (such as the Matrix trilogy) use a lot.

The choices of music in different stages of the opening clip use different features of iconography. For example the building track when Will is running from the kitchen is very stereotypical of Action Thrillers, ending in a sudden climax leaving the audience confused and questioning. However the music in the opening scene beginning with Will at the park is very calm and slow, the exact opposite of what is expected of a film of this genre. We deliberately did this to contest the stereotype of the genre as well as show how the Ex-Agents life is relatively normal and calm now.

THE ICONOGRAPHY